If the workers at Stop & Shop go out on strike, I’ll shop elsewhere. I’m sure many others will, too.

But it’s distressing to hear from some of the workers that this fight is not quite what it seems. Stop & Shop’s management wants to require that its union workers pay at least a little bit toward their health care costs. The workers don’t want to do that.

What isn’t said, though, is their health care sucks — and they get it through their union. They have a crap policy. If they had a better one, most would gladly pay a share of it, but that’ll never happen because if they had a good policy, it would cost too much for Stop & Shop, take money out of union coffers and sock low-paid workers too badly for them to have any coverage at all.

What this strike talk really shows, once again, is how badly we need national health care. Companies can’t afford to offer health insurance with costs soaring year after year, and workers who are struggling as it is can’t keep paying higher shares of the tab. We’ll all go broke.

Can the country as a whole pull it off without going broke, too? Maybe, maybe not. But at least we can make intelligent policy decisions that apply across the board, instead of this awful mishmash of great care existing side by side with no care.

I hope the strike doesn’t happen. These workers can’t afford to stand idle. And Stop & Shop at least has unions. It seems kind of counterproductive to avoid its stores during a strike by shopping someplace else where workers have no say at all.